


i'd give you my lungs (so you could breathe)

by discowing (ameliafromafairytale)



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Brothers, Catharsis, Dick Grayson Gets a Hug, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Good Older Sibling Dick Grayson, Good Sibling Jason Todd, Heart-to-Heart, Jason Todd Gets A Hug, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Mushy, No Incest, The Ski Trip, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, just. so mushy, missing memories, post-hurt so mostly just comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23388223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliafromafairytale/pseuds/discowing
Summary: A brush with fear toxin on patrol leaves Dick seeking comfort and grounding in his first brother's presence.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Comments: 47
Kudos: 872
Collections: everybody loves dick





	i'd give you my lungs (so you could breathe)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [he ain't heavy, he's my brother](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22531537) by [someplacewarm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/someplacewarm/pseuds/someplacewarm). 



> part of this is inspired by [this headcanon/fic](https://bigskydreaming.tumblr.com/post/188122017766/bigskydreaming-i-have-a-lot-a-lot-of-feelings). op has a lot of great meta on dick and jason's relationship, so if you like this, check his posts out!
> 
> takes place in an ambiguously preboot setting, though damian's death is mentioned. just assume preboot relationships and characterizations, and yes, that means no rhato. we have taste here. hopefully. 
> 
> title from "brother" by kodaline :) aka a song that should be on every dick grayson playlist, lol
> 
> cannot stress this enough: THIS IS 100% PLATONIC. no batcest present or tolerated.
> 
> EDIT: i realized this was also inspired in part by the fic linked, so credit where credit is due!

Someone’s knocking on his door. 

Jason scowls, not wanting to deal with the interruption. Spread out on the table before him are a number of his guns in various states of cleaning and being reassembled; it’ll be a pain in the ass to have to pause now. 

For a moment, he considers pretending not to be home. None of the assholes that call themselves his family will be deterred by that, though, and anybody who’s trying to kill him and has made it this far won’t let a locked door stop them either. 

It’s probably just little Ms. Guzman from down the hall needing his help with reaching something up high for the fifth time this week, though, so begrudgingly, he grabs a pistol and his knife and creeps toward the door. He’s not stupid enough to stick his face straight up to a peephole, so he’s got a periscope contraption rigged up to let him see who’s there without risking getting shot right in the eye. 

It’s...Dick. 

Jason heaves a sigh, then, resigned, undoes his locks and opens the door just enough to stick his head out. 

“What do you want?” he asks, wary. It’s always more of a hassle in the long run to avoid his older brother, but that doesn't mean he's _eager_ to deal with whatever it is he wants at the moment.

Dick looks tired. It’s more than just physical, though he looks pale, his eyes duller than normal and ringed with dark circles. He just looks _weary_ in a way Jason’s not wholly accustomed to seeing him appear, like there’s some impossible weight dragging his shoulders down. 

“Can I...I don’t know, sit on your couch or something?” Dick asks, running a hand through messier than usual hair. “I just...really don’t want to be alone right now.” 

Jason raises an eyebrow. 

“And you came to _me_ because…?” Seriously, Dick has practically the whole caped community in his contacts list, many (if not most) of whom are way more cuddly and nice and well-suited for whatever comforting he wants/needs than Jason is. 

Dick sighs. 

“Never mind,” he says, face going flat as he turns to leave. “I’ll go somewhere else.” Suddenly, Jason feels a bit guilty, yet also...strangely touched? Because really, why _would_ Dick go to Jason when he has so many other (better) choices? 

“Hey, I never said you couldn’t come in,” he says, opening the door and stepping aside. Dick turns back around, surprise filtering across his face for a second as he stares at Jason, then shrugs and slips in. 

Dick toes his shoes off ( _Crocs?_ Really? Something must be up) and follows Jason back to the living room where he grabs a throw blanket and, just as he asked, curls up on the couch. Jason returns to cleaning his guns, uncomfortably aware of the fact that Dick is watching him. In this day and age when everyone has their smart phones on them all the time, why can't his older brother entertain himself with Candy Crush or some other stupid colorful money-grabbing game instead of burning a hole in Jason's back with his stare? 

“Take a picture; it’ll last longer,” Jason snaps eventually when he’s finished with his guns and no longer able to tolerate the way Dick’s eyes are making his skin itch. 

“Seriously?” Dick asks, sounding surprised. “You’ll actually let me?”

Jason glances over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “You have pictures of me.” 

“Yeah, from _before_ ,” Dick says, gesturing vaguely with one hand. “And all the more recent photos I have of you, you’re in costume. I don’t have any pictures of just...grown-up Jason.” He rests his chin on the back of the couch and the gaze he shoots over its edge is sad despite the relatively light tone of his voice. 

Jason realizes with a shock that Dick’s right - he can’t remember the last time he let anyone near him with a camera when he was just wearing civvies. For that matter, he thinks he might be able to count the number of times he’s hung out just to hang out with anyone since his return, no surveillance or stakeout or mission talk or anything of that nature involved, on his hands and still have fingers left over. 

“...Oh,” he says, feeling wrong-footed and suddenly awkward. “Um. Well, you better get my good side, then,” he says, trying to force some cocky cheer into his words. Dick blinks, then squirms for a second and pulls out his phone. He doesn’t ask him to smile or anything (good, because that’s where he draws the line); he just snaps a few pictures of Jason looking at him over his shoulder. 

“Hold on a second,” Jason says, standing and walking over to the couch to lean against its back. “Let me see those; I refuse to let you have ugly pictures of me.” Dick huffs out a laugh. 

“It’s a big brother’s prerogative to have ugly pictures of his siblings,” he says, though he hands his phone over to Jason in a startling display of trust. “You should see the ones I have of the rest of the kids.” 

Dick had taken four pictures of Jason. They’re nothing to write home about, no stunning composition or breathtaking lighting despite the fact that the WayneTech phones Bruce insists they all own are some of the best phones for photography. Jason looks awkward, almost hunched over in his scratched up chair that doesn’t match the table he’s sitting at. The ratty tee he’s wearing is gross, stained with oil and grease and probably blood, and rides up enough that the bandages he has wrapped around his waist from a knife wound are visible above the waistline of his sweats. His hair is sticking up everywhere, still not combed down from last night’s bedhead, and his white streak is on full display. 

Something about his face looks young and awkward, vulnerable and almost surprised in all of the pictures. He doesn’t look anything like the fearsome Red Hood. He...kinda looks like an average college student, actually. It’s bizarre to look at - Jason feels like these pictures Dick’s taken are of a stranger, not him. 

“Eugh, delete these! I look like such a dweeb,” Jason says, handing the phone back to Dick. 

Dick just looks down at his screen, swiping through them again, and smiles fondly. His shoulders seem a little less weighed down. 

“I like them,” he says, still definitely not deleting the photos. “It reminds me of Aspen.” 

“...Of what?” Jason asks blankly after a long moment when Dick doesn't elaborate, trying and failing to figure out what he's talking about. 

“Aspen,” Dick repeats, looking up at him, his brow furrowed slightly. “Six, maybe seven years ago? Skiing in Aspen while Bruce was off-world?”

Jason just stares at him, something cold and heavy settling in his gut. He has literally no recollection of this - this _ski trip_ Dick’s reminiscing about. Jason has gaps in his memory - he knows that. It’s to be expected given the _crowbar to the head_ \- there’s only so much the Lazarus Pit can fix, after all, and memories are an especially tricky, nebulous thing. It’s just that...this seems like something big, a bigger deal than the usual stuff that’s easier to brush off as having been forgotten due to the passage of time rather than a traumatic brain injury.

Dick makes a noise startlingly reminiscent of Damian and then begins furiously scrolling through his photos. 

“Where is it, where is it...” he mutters to himself, then, “Here!” he says triumphantly, handing his phone back to Jason. 

On the screen is a picture of a Polaroid picture. A younger Dick, maybe eighteen or nineteen, has a friendly arm slung around a much smaller Jason’s shoulders, snow-tipped mountains making a stunning backdrop behind them; _Me & Dick _is scribbled at the bottom of the photo in his childish scrawl. There’s a heart in the corner of the screen that means this photo is saved as a favorite. 

His younger self is smiling at the camera, all youthful bravado, but Jason’s experienced eye can see the insecurity behind that cocked eyebrow, stiff posture, and too-wide smile. He looks dorky, clearly trying too hard to be cool in front of Dick and whoever took the photo. He sees what Dick meant when he said the photos he just took reminded him of this. 

“I lost my copy of the photo when my apartment in Blüdhaven got blown up,” Dick says, at once sheepish and sad. “Thank god you kept yours; it’s my favorite picture of you.” He must’ve gone through Jason’s stuff from before he died at some point to get this; Jason knows he hasn’t seen that picture this side of the grave. 

“Dick,” he begins, handing the phone back. His mouth feels dry and his ears are ringing with the echo of a years-old explosion. “I...I don’t remember this.” 

“Like...at all?” Dick asks, a concerned frown tugging at his lips. 

“At all,” Jason shakes his head. 

“...Oh,” Dick says at length, leaning back into the couch. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Jason comes around to sit on the couch properly. “I kind of figured,” he admits eventually. “Well, not that you didn’t remember this _specifically_ , but that you didn’t remember some stuff from before.”

“How so?” Jason asks. He hasn’t discussed the memory issues with anyone, not even Talia - how could Dick know? What gave him away?

“Little things,” his brother shrugs. “Inside jokes you didn’t catch, a few questions here and there about things you should’ve known the answer to, your attitude towards some stuff...you get the idea.”

Jason sits there quietly absorbing that information. Dick had looked...lighter, less exhausted, when he’d been looking at the pictures he’d taken before and Jason _does_ want to know some of what he’s forgetting, so…

“Can you tell me about it?” he asks. “About Aspen?” 

Dick blinks at him, then grins. 

“Sure,” he says, his voice going all warm and mushy, and it doesn’t make Jason feel better, _it doesn’t_. It’s just coincidence that the distant ringing in his ears beings to fade when Dick speaks. 

“It was a month or two before I turned nineteen,” Dick says. “You were still fairly new at being Robin and we’d only met each other for the first time a few weeks before. The Justice League had some mission that took Bruce off-planet for two weeks; Alfred was supposed to watch you but he caught a pretty bad cold and you wanted to give him a break, so you called me. I decided to make a trip out of it.” 

“Why Aspen?” Jason asks. “I would’ve thought the circus would be more your idea of...brotherly bonding vacation time, or whatever.”

“Haly’s didn’t have a winter tour that year,” Dick says. “Plus, I really just wanted to get you out of Gotham. Colorado’s beautiful, and, most importantly, _sunny_.” He smiles. “You couldn’t stop commenting on how _weird_ clean air smelled, and I can’t even count how many times you either stopped dead in your tracks or ran into someone or something because you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the stars at night.”

Something niggles at the back of Jason’s mind. 

“Did you...teach me some constellations?” he asks, squinting as he tries to get a hold on the slippery ghost of a memory. He can’t remember Bruce doing that with him, but he _had_ known constellations (well, Northern Hemisphere constellations, at least) by the time he’d started training with Talia…

“Yeah,” Dick says, looking surprised and a bit touched. “I did. It’s not a very useful skill in Gotham where you can’t even see our own sun most of the time, let alone Orion’s Belt, but we had fun picking them out and making up our own stories for them.

“You’d never been skiing before, so I taught you how,” Dick continues. “I almost had to physically restrain you to keep you from trying the black diamond trails your first day on skis, though.” Jason snorts. 

“That sounds like something I would do,” he says and Dick levels him with a _look_.

“Jason, you immediately want to try the hardest, most dangerous stuff with the things you learn how to do _now_ ,” Dick says. “You haven’t exactly grown out of that.” 

“Eh,” Jason waves a hand, “ _details_. Keep telling the story.” 

“Hm…” Dick muses. “What else happened...well, we found a serial killer who’d been living in a burrow off one of the trails and killing inexperienced and unlucky skiers who would go off the slope and get stuck in snowbanks. That was interesting.”

“Dude, why wouldn’t you lead with that?” Jason demands, lightly smacking Dick’s arm. “That’s awesome!” 

“We found him because he almost got _you_ ,” Dick says with a frown. “The lodge we stayed at had a huge bulletin board of skiers who had gone missing, and you and I realized that something was up. We snuck out to the woods by the slopes one night to poke around, which...was a bad idea on my part,” he admits. “We only had civvies on us since we'd _promised_ Alfred we wouldn't be getting up to anything. On top of that, you weren’t used to fighting or navigating more difficult terrains in anything but your Robin gear; even your winter costume was less bulky than what we were wearing. 

“You got stuck not that far away from his burrow,” Dick continues. “I guess he thought you were easy prey and couldn’t help himself; he certainly wasn’t expecting you to fight back like you did. Still, I almost didn’t get there in time...I guess it’s a good thing you don’t remember that part.” 

Jason fights back a shiver. 

“How’d we turn him in since we didn’t have our costumes on us?” he asks. “There’s no way Dick Grayson and Jason Todd just strolled up to the Aspen police or whatever with a serial killer in tow, right?”

“We knocked him out and dragged him back to the authorities, yes,” Dick says. “But we also included a very detailed map with directions of how to get to his little hidey-hole which was also where he kept his trophies. There was enough evidence that the courts overlooked that he was only caught because two unidentified masked strangers had dropped him on the police’s doorstep - the police who, by the way, hadn’t even realized they had a serial killer on their hands yet.” 

Jason shakes his head. 

“Typical cops,” he says. “It sounds like we had fun, at least.” Dick smiles. 

“I like to think that we did,” he replies. “I couldn’t afford to take you out on trips like that _every_ time Bruce went out of town, but we did it a couple more times before...well, before. I guess you don’t remember those, either.” 

“So, we were...close,” Jason says quietly, not trusting his own voice. 

“Maybe not as much as we could have been given that I was still trying to avoid Bruce as much as possible, which didn’t leave us with very many opportunities,” Dick admits, “but...yeah; you were my kid brother. I never realized how much I wanted something like that until you came along. I tried my best, but...” He shrugs and gives a self-deprecating smile. “I probably shouldn’t have let Bruce get in the way of things.” 

Jason falls silent, tilting his head back so he’s staring at his ugly outdated stucco ceiling instead of the terrifying vulnerability on Dick’s face. He tries not to feel like his world is shaking and rearranging under his feet with this knowledge. Still, he wants Dick to be telling the truth, wants to be certain of that love and _connection_ , just as much as he _doesn’t_ want to admit to the possibility of a good chunk of his world view being potentially very wrong. 

If Dick is telling the truth, how much other important stuff is there from his childhood that he can’t remember? How many situations and relationships has he misread because of trauma and an unreliable brain? Is whatever hurt he’s lost worth the happiness that has been stolen from him, perhaps permanently, along with it? Happy memories of his mother, _Catherine,_ without the drugs are already few and blurred with age - has death stolen from even that precious, small collection, too?

How could he be lying, though, with a photo like that to back him up? 

Jason feels his eyes burn with traitorous tears and quickly blinks them away, hoping Dick doesn’t notice. No such luck, though.

“You okay, little wing?” Dick murmurs. Jason swallows. 

“I’m half a foot taller than you now, old timer,” he says, voice only slightly hoarse. “I think it’s time you put that nickname to rest.” 

“You may be taller than me, but you’re still my little brother,” Dick replies, and something about how matter-of-fact he is about it makes Jason feel...well, happy, but it hurts. He’s spent so long punishing himself for being weak enough to want his family to love and accept him again that he doesn’t know how to handle it when they actually give him some of that love.

“I’m fine,” Jason says, then clears his throat. “So,” he continues, eager to change the subject and get his mind off things, “why’d you come to me today?”

Dick is quiet. When Jason looks over, he sees that he’s picking at a loose thread at the hem of his sweater. 

“I was covering Tim’s patrol last night,” Dick says eventually. “Got hit by some fear gas - nothing I couldn’t just power through in the moment, but I always have nightmares for days afterward.”

“Fun stuff,” Jason sighs, intimately familiar with the longer lasting side effects of fear gas exposure. “Let me guess - my death made a cameo, and you needed to reassure yourself that I’m alive?” Lord knows Bruce has done it enough, though thankfully he’s usually considerate just to stare at him through the window from across the street instead of coming in to attempt _conversation_. 

“No,” Dick says, then he frowns. “Well, sort of, but not really; it’s...complicated.” He sighs.

Jason’s brow wrinkles in confusion, but Dick continues before he can voice his question. 

“A lot of bad stuff happened to the family in the time period between your death and your return to the city,” he explains. “The things the fear gas made me see, the nightmares I had later…” He gives a full-body shake. “I needed something to ground me in the present. You’re here, you’re alive, which means I’m not _then_ anymore.” 

“Still, why me?” Jason asks. “Why not the brat? He came along after all that stuff, too.” 

Dick just shakes his head. 

“It has to do with the nightmares, with the specific fears,” he says. “I don’t really want to talk about it right now.” 

Jason lets the issue drop. He doesn’t need to know what Dick Grayson is afraid of.

He feels the couch shift and then suddenly Dick is leaning against his side, resting his head on his shoulder. 

“I don’t know if I’ve ever said it,” Dick begins, voice quiet. “I know your resurrection process sucked and all the family drama around your return is a nightmare, but...I really am glad you’re alive.”

Jason swallows, fighting the lump that suddenly appears in his throat. 

“I don’t know if I can really effectively convey how I feel,” Dick continues. “It’s...you were my _little brother_ , and then you were _dead_. I didn’t...it’s so stupid, but I really didn’t realize how much space you occupied in my heart until you were gone.” The breath he takes is shaky, but Jason doesn’t hear any tears yet. Dick buries his face in Jason’s shoulder and lets out an embarrassed groan. “You can’t judge me for this, you _can’t_ , but it’s _so corny_ ,” he laments. 

Despite the serious moment Dick’s trying to have, Jason can’t hold back a chuckle at his brother’s dramatics. 

“I think your reputation is already toast, Dickie,” he says. “We all know you’re a softy at heart.”

Dick groans again, but doesn’t speak immediately. Instead, Jason feels calloused fingers tapping a senseless pattern out on the back of his hand. 

Eventually, Dick says, “When I look at you, it feels like...I don’t know how else to say it, but it feels like my heart is too big for my chest because it’s so full of love. Maybe losing and getting back Damian too made it worse, but even when you haven’t showered in like a _week_ and your breath smells like dog ass and you’re grouchier than Bruce gets when someone steals his coffee, I still see you and think, ‘ _that’s my baby brother_.’” 

“ _Dick_ …” Jason tries, hating how his voice cracks, but Dick shakes his head from where it still rests on his shoulder. 

“No,” he says. “This is sappier than syrup season in Canada, I know, but I’ve kept this to myself long enough.” Dick sits up straight and cups Jason’s face in his hands, forcing them to look each other in the eye. Jason’s not surprised to see how wobbly Dick’s expression is. “Jason Peter Todd, I am so _happy_ you’re alive,” Dick stresses, then pulls Jason’s head down and presses a kiss to his forehead before releasing him. 

Jason leans back into the couch, blinking at Dick and feeling a little overwhelmed. His face is wet; he realizes he’s crying, but he can’t bring himself to care. Dick’s face isn’t exactly dry now, either. 

“Sorry,” Dick croaks after a moment, scrubbing at his face. “Sorry. That’s...a lot to dump on you, I know.”

Jason’s jaw works as he struggles to find words. Finally, voice thick, he says, “I don’t think anyone’s said that to me since I came back.” 

He can actually see the exact moment Dick’s heart breaks. 

“Oh, little wing,” he breathes, then pulls him in for a hug. His grip is bruising, but Jason doesn’t want to escape. Instead, he melts into the embrace, bringing his arms up to hug Dick back just as tightly. 

Jason’s not sure how long they sit there, rocking back and forth slightly as Dick whispers gentle ‘ _I love you_ ’s and reassurances in his ear. His heart is bursting, overcome with emotion from feeling so unbearably loved. If this is anything like it's like for Dick every time he sees him, then it’s a goddamn miracle he’s managed to hold it in for so long. 

“Is this what it feels like?” he asks, not bothering to elaborate. Dick lets out a gentle huff, understanding anyway. 

“More or less,” he says. “Sometimes I get so angry I want to strangle you, but yeah, even then this feeling is still there.” 

“I’m sorry,” Jason blurts out. 

“Don’t be,” Dick chides. “It’s not a bad thing, you know. It doesn’t hurt me.” 

“No,” Jason says, shaking his head. “I’m sorry for...everything else. For being such an ass and saying you never cared.” 

Dick hums, still holding him tight. 

“I won’t say it didn’t hurt,” he says, “but the spots in your memory meant you weren’t working with all the facts. That excuses some of it.” 

“The rest, though?”

“I accept your apology,” he says, “and offer you one of my own in return. I should’ve tried harder to put things aside with Bruce so I could be around more. I managed it for Tim; I should’ve managed it for you, too.”

Jason snorts. 

“I think it’d be pretty hypocritical of me to blame you for not having all your issues with Bruce worked out at age nineteen,” he says, “but apology accepted, nevertheless.”

“Are we even, then?” Dick asks. 

“Sure, why not?” Jason replies. Carefully, he extracts himself from the hug. He's...warm and content and even _peaceful_ for the first time in he doesn’t even know how long. It's faintly miraculous; he wonders if this is how everybody feels after a heart to heart with Dick Grayson. If so, no wonder he has so many friends. 

“You feel a little better now?” Dick asks, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder. 

“Yeah,” Jason says. “You?” Dick nods and smiles at him, looking happier and much less worn down than he’d been when he first showed up, and Jason can’t help but smile back. 

He stands, stretching before the situation has the opportunity to get too emotional again. Jason’s grin grows sheepish when his stomach growls.

“Since we’ve hugged our feelings out, why don’t we get some food?” he suggests. Dick makes a face. 

“No chili dogs, please?” he asks. “I always smell like beef for the rest of the day when I eat them.” Jason laughs. 

“ _Eau de Chili Dog_ ,” he jokes, “the latest prestige scent in men's cologne, modeled by Dick Grayson.”

Dick gives him a playful shove. 

“Shut up,” he says, grinning. “It’s not funny!” 

“Okay, okay,” Jason says, waving a hand in Dick’s direction. “I’ll let you pick this time, but _only_ because you were so nice to me today.”

“I’m always nice to you,” Dick grumbles, but he pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through food options in Jason’s area. “Why is there so much _Italian?_ ”

“Because we’re in Jersey,” Jason says drolly, earning an eye roll for his comment. 

“Hold up,” Dick says, smacking Jason’s arm excitedly. “A Korean fried chicken place just opened up a few blocks from here! Dude, can we?” Jason makes a noise of interest, having heard great things about the dish but not having had the opportunity to try it yet. 

“Sure,” he says, “It’s not like you’ll get to try it hanging out with Damian, after all.”

“Oh, hush,” Dick says, standing. “I’m just glad he’s passionate about something outside of crime fighting now; those early months were rough.” He pops into the bathroom while Jason heads to his bedroom to finally get dressed, then swears loudly. 

“What?” Jason calls as he pulls on some jeans and a clean shirt.

“I just remembered I came here in Crocs. _Crocs!_ _”_ Dick calls back. “I’m _Dick Grayson_ , I can’t be seen in public wearing my depression shoes!” 

Jason rolls his eyes. 

“Just borrow my slides; they shouldn’t be _too_ big,” he says when Dick emerges, having clearly splashed some water on his face and combed his hair. Jason kind of hates him; Dick manages to look glamorous even after crying, while _he_ probably looks like a troll’s nutsack. It’s not fair. 

“Really?” Dick asks, smiling. “You’re spoiling me today - you let me take pictures, pick the food, _and_ wear your slides? What’s next, you let me drive your bike?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jason scoffs. “I just can’t be seen in public with a grown man who wears Crocs that have little Justice League buttons in them, that’s all. It’s for _my_ image, not yours.” 

“Of course,” Dick says, grinning. “How could I _ever_ think otherwise?” 

“Of course,” Jason echoes as he laces up his boots. “You’re paying, after all.”

“Oh, I am?” Dick asks, raising his eyebrows. “With my meager journalist salary?” 

“It’s not like we’re eating at Sukiyabashi Jiro,” Jason scoffs. “Besides, isn’t treating their siblings every now and then something big brothers are supposed to do?”

“Hm, you got me there,” Dick says fondly. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Jason says, rolling his eyes. He grabs his wallet and keys, ushering Dick toward the door. “C’mon, let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this for my own catharsis, mostly bc i still have some leftover trauma from finding my little sister's suicide note a few months ago. she's fine, we got to her in time, but in case you couldn't tell, the things i have dick say to jason is all stuff i want to say to her. it's all stuff i feel. every time i look at my sister now i feel like the grinch at the end of the movie when his heart gets super big!!! she's the most important person in my life, the person /I/ stayed alive for, and i just love her so much :')
> 
> seriously, i know these are rough times - if you're feeling that low, that unloved and/or lonely, that disgusting, just know that there is at least one person out there who loves you more than than anything or anyone else even if they don't realize it. maybe you know them already, maybe they're still in your future, but i promise you, if receiving that love feels even half as good as having that love for someone else does, it is so, _SO_ worth sticking around for. 
> 
> i relate to dick a lot...he's an imperfect but trying eldest sibling who's under a lot of pressure from a strict parent's high expectations. he's also constantly acting as the bridge between said strict parent and his siblings to keep the household peace and probably gets scolded for parenting his siblings to much. a lot of the sibling content i see for the batfam is more lighthearted, even verging on slapstick sometimes, but i wanted to try for a portrayal that's less "cain instinct" and more "i would fight a bear to keep you safe" without actually having someone fight a bear. hopefully this wasn't ridiculously ooc with how mushy it was! 
> 
> as for what the fear toxin made dick see - i left it ambiguous for a reason. there's a LOT of shit the batfam went through in the years between jason's death and resurrection - i just thought that dick would feel safe and grounded with him. maybe it's bc he's willing to go That Far if it comes down to it, maybe it's bc he's huge and muscly like bruce but Isn't Bruce...who knows :)
> 
> if you enjoyed this, you can find my social media links on my profile. they work now!!!! and also i finally unlocked my twitter accounts!!


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